I am pleased to be a guest on the MusicFirst podcast, Profiles in Teaching with Technology, this week.
I had a great conversation with Dr. Jim Frankle. We talked about my journey into music ed, catching an interest in technology, tips for teachers who are apprehensive about tech, what my school’s music program looks like (normally and during the past year). and my favorite uses for technology in the classroom.
Check it out below and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Apple's new Macs with M1 processors are out and so are reviews. Hear me talk about these with Will Kuhn on my podcast this week.
I have had a few music teachers reach out to me in the past week who are reconsidering their next Mac because they want to edit virtual ensemble videos this coming concert season. From these conversations I am learning that most music teachers have no idea these new Macs are even out.
I strongly recommed you read the reviews I have linked below. The message is clear. If you are about to buy a Mac, you must buy one of the three new M1 Macs. However much money you think you are saving by getting last year's model for a few hundred dollars cheaper does not make up for the performance you will loose out on by even buying the entry level MacBook Air for $999 (which is even cheaper on Apple's education store).
From everything I have read, it sounds like even the new Air smokes my maxed-out 16 inch MacBook Pro from 2016. I can't wait to see what Apple does with the pro laptop models in the coming years.
Apple’s M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Review: The Laptop’s Biggest Leap in Years - WSJ:
I finally got the new MacBook Pro’s fan to kick on, with a temperature of 98 degrees, when playing “Rise of Tomb Raider” while simultaneously exporting a 4K video in Adobe Premiere and running some Chrome tabs in the background.
Apple’s M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Review: The Laptop’s Biggest Leap in Years - WSJ:
Apple’s M1 chip, however, is far more power efficient. Less power = less heat = no fan. The new MacBook Air has a completely fanless design, while the MacBook Pro still has a fan to allow for sustained high speeds.
So of course I deemed it my mission to get these laptops to slow down, heat up or—in the case of the MacBook Pro—fire up the fan.
As you’ll see in the video, I tried it all, beginning with Google Chrome, the most resource-intensive browser of them all. Fifty browsing tabs? Not at a peep or a degree above 80 Fahrenheit on either M1-powered system. The Intel-powered Air? Thirty-five tabs got its fans revving, and it hit 93 degrees.
How about 65 tabs? The M1-powered Air was still cool and quiet, though it began showing signs of sluggish scrolling and tab switching. The Intel-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro powered up its fan at around 75 tabs. At a whopping 100 tabs—which no sane human could ever navigate—the M1-powered Pro was quiet as a mouse and scrolling pages smoothly. Even when I threw in a Zoom call, it kept silent. I finally got the new MacBook Pro’s fan to kick on, with a temperature of 98 degrees, when playing “Rise of Tomb Raider” while simultaneously exporting a 4K video in Adobe Premiere and running some Chrome tabs in the background.
Apple MacBook Air with M1 review: new chip, no problem - The Verge:
Apple has built a new system for every iOS app that is available in the Mac menu called “Touch Alternatives.” It is a series of buttons, gestures, and other eldritch incantations to make apps that need a touchscreen work on a Mac.
It’s frankly ridiculous and the clearest sign yet that Apple is bending itself into knots to avoid doing what obviously needs to be done: put a touchscreen on the Mac.
Luckily, you can ignore all of these iOS apps until developers optimize them or Apple figures out a better way to clean up the weird stuff.
M1 Macs review: The Next Generation – Six Colors:
But there are a bunch of limitations. App developers can opt their iOS apps out of being visible on the Mac, and many have done just that. Want to watch videos in the Netflix app rather than a browser tab? Too bad—Netflix isn’t available, nor are most other video streaming services. Many productivity apps are missing, too. In fact, over the days that I was working on this review, I found more iOS apps disappearing from the store.
I’m not entirely sure for the reason for developers opting out of letting their iOS apps run on the Mac, but I’d wager they’re some combination of quality control, wanting their users to use an existing Mac app or web interface, and (for video providers) fears over security or piracy.
Having used a bunch of these apps, I can understand some of these concerns. The real question is, will they be addressed in due time or will the Mac version of the iOS App Store remain a bit scattershot?
Google Drive web opening docx, Office files in editing mode - 9to5Google:
Google’s editing applications can open and edit Microsoft files, with that capability recently coming to Android. When opening Office files from the Drive web client, Google will now directly open them in editing mode.
I would guess this is one more small nail in the coffin for my school district never using anything other than Google Drive again. Most of my colleagues have moved their docs, tables, and presentations to Google’s suite of apps. For the few hold-outs who still email Word docs instead of Google Doc links, it looks like this will allow them to continue editing comfortably in Microsoft Office, while enjoying the benefits of organizing their work in Google Drive and sharing it with others.
I have been outspoken about enjoying native apps over web apps but online teaching has forced me to depend on my Mac and Google Chrome much more. The more I get used to doing my work in a web browser, the less I mind it.
I still do most of my work in Apple’s iWork suite because it is nicer, easier, prettier, faster, and better integrated with Apple platforms. Something tells me iWork isn’t getting the option to edit from the Google Drive interface any day soon.
Google Meet rolling out custom background images for web - 9to5Google:
Google Meet continues its onslaught of pre-announced features today with the launch of custom backgrounds during video calls. This customization is a staple of modern conferencing apps, and one that helps convey “more of your personality.”
Another Google Meet feature playing catchup with Zoom. This has started rolling out in my school district but I don’t have the option in my account yet.
From what I have seen other students do, it appears to work as expected, maybe slightly less consistent at detecting the edges of a person than Zoom is.
Many of Google Meet’s “catchup” features of the past few months have been buggy, though I think I prefer them being this aggressive with updates than to drag their feet.
It will be interesting to see what Google can do with Meet that is actually unique to their companies strengths. The pandemic caught them by surprise and they have been rushing to keep up with the success of Zoom.
Google has always had too many communication apps, and has never seemed to know what to do with them (Google Hangouts, Duo, Allo, and a bunch of others that have been killed off). Google has a lot of potential with Meet and seems to be focusing on it with more intent since the pandemic forced many to work line.
Google has an education platform to rest on which Zoom doesn’t have. It would be interesting to see them make a move that better integrated Meet with Google Classroom and Docs. Hopefully, we will see them continue to focus on rapid development in the coming months, even after they have ”caught up” with many of Zoom’s popular features.
This is from a while ago but I think many will appreciate it…
Apple revives classic ‘Music Quiz’ iPod game through the Shortcuts app on iOS 14 - 9to5Mac:
On the iPod, Music Quiz plays a number of songs in shuffle mode and it provides five different options for you to choose which song is playing. The shortcut version of this mini game on iOS 14 is quite similar, as it also plays random songs with five different answer options.
Music Quiz on iOS 14 is part of the “Starter Shortcuts” folder, which offers four different shortcuts that demonstrate what users can do with the app. In order to find and play Music Quiz on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 14 or iPadOS 14, just follow the steps below:
If you have not tried Siri Shortcuts on your phone yet, this is a fun way to test them out. It’s baked right in to your phone if you are running iOS 14.
This shortcut makes it really easy to dissect how one of these is built and play around with the logic a bit to better understand how you might build your own automations using similar building blocks.
Last weekend, I had the awesome pleasure of being a workflow guest on Learn OmniFocus, a website dedicated to teaching and training on the task management app OmniFocus, complementary apps, and the productive way of life.
The video, along with resources mentioned in my appearance can be viewed here. I recommend watching it here because there are chapters you can use to skip around to the various sections of the video by topic.
Alternatively you can watch the video on Facebook or on YouTube.
Topic include
the definition of multitasking
my love of quick entry and using a task inbox
how single item action lists are useful in the middle school band teaching environment
how to stay on top of more tasks than are actually possible to do in the day through use of tags and perspectives that filter out information only relevant to a particular context
Using the Drafts app for quickly capturing my thoughts, processing my tasks, and acting upon them in powerful ways
using project templates for larger projects like field trips and musical performances so that tasks don't slip through the cracks
using Siri Shortcuts to turn data into variables and make a blog post, shared document, and OmniFocus project for creating an episode of the Music Ed Tech Talk podcast
Using DEVONthink to connect documents to projects and tasks in OmniFocus and keep things I want to "check out later" off of my todo list
putting widgets with charts that show a view of my day in OmniFocus on the Home Screen of my iPhone
My thanks to Tim Stringer for his invitation and for his inspiring work with Learn OmniFocus and for inviting me to join!
Learn OmniFocus is a great website, resource, and community dedicated to empowering people to be more mindful and productive. The app OmniFocus is at the center of it but there is so much more to it than that, including productivity basics, apps, and services that compliment one another. Be sure to check it out here and become a member here. There are educator discounts!
My school district purchased us some music tech services for use in our online classes this fall. I have been meaning to write at more length about Noteflight Learn and Soundtrap, but I am still getting my heels into the ground with them. Both services take time to learn how they are effective in practice, not to mention there are a lot of quirks with how they integrate with our learning management software, Canvas.
I did want to highlight some upcoming features to Noteflight Learn, specifically regarding their new SoundCheck integration which launched this past summer. My district purchased the SoundCheck integration which means that I can give Noteflight scores as assessments where my band students play the notes into the computer and get a score. Some of these forthcoming features are going to save me a lot of headaches and I am glad to see them coming.
Check out the full list in the blog post below from John Mlynczak. I have quoted some of my favorites.
New Features Coming Soon
We are working on several new features to be made available ASAP. In the coming weeks, here is what you will see:
- The SoundCheck assessment rating will be automatically added to grade book of your own LMS, including Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, Powerschool, Brightspace, Blackboard, Moodle, and more.
- Students just need to complete their assignment and use the same “Turn In” button already available in Noteflight Learn.
- All Content Library scores will include a SoundCheck version that can be used right away. You can always edit a Content Library score and create your own SoundCheck version as well.
And the cherry on top for this iPad-loving, late-night, couch worker:
- iOS functionality. SoundCheck currently does not work in the browser on iOS.
Google Meet rolling out Jamboard integration for collaborative whiteboarding | 9to5Google:
Last week, Google’s video conferencing tool launched a 49-person grid and background blur. Google Meet is now integrating with Jamboard to add a digital whiteboard for visual and collaborative brainstorming.
Google Jamboard, which I have blogged about here, is indeed a fun tool and all of my students find it engaging.
This new Google Meet integration is awesome. Once you start up a digital whiteboard from within a Meet, Jamboard asks you if you want to create a new one or use an existing file in your Google Drive. If you opt to create a new one, it automatically saves it to your drive and names it using the date and meet code of your session.
Immediately, a dialogue with share permissions for the file pops up, pre-filled with the accounts of all students who are present in the Meet so that you can make sure they all have access in one click.
The integration is very smooth. I tested it today at the beginning of my classes so that they could give feedback to one another on a recent Soundtrap project I had them do.
The students recorded brass duets and trios in Soundtrap projects last week. I played three examples of them for the class today and students posted sticky notes on this whiteboard that took me one minute to set up last night. It was a simple activity that was made even more simple by this new integration.
Speaking of widgets on the iPhone home screen, this is one that I have a feeling a lot of people will appreciate.
Sticky Widgets allows you to post sticky notes straight to the home screen that come in different colors and say anything you want. The experience is as simple as you can imagine.
Sure, I advocate for using proper note-taking and task management software, but there are times where you just want to write something directly and trust that it will be plastered in front of your eyes indefinitely.
Check out a full review from MacStories...
Sticky Widgets Brings Simple Sticky Notes to Your Home Screen:
Sticky Widgets enables placing sticky note-style widgets on your iPhone or iPad Home Screen which can be modified simply by tapping on the widget. It’s utility that’s such an obvious fit for widgets, I’m surprised I haven’t seen a hundred other apps doing the same thing.
Click below to read 9to5Google's article about 49-person grid view and background blur, coming to Google Meet on the web.
Google Meet starts rolling out 49-person grid view, background blur:
As previewed last month, Google is starting to launch a handful of pre-announced features for Meet. Background blur and being able to see up to 49 people simultaneously is coming to Google Meet in the coming weeks.
This is going to be huge for teachers. Read the entire article. They explain how to set everything up once this feature rolls out to you.
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